Mexican Actress Tessa Ía Streams Onto Pantaya With ‘De Brutas, Nada’

10/14/2020

Tessa Ía is right at home in her latest screen project.

The Mexican actress stars as the lead character in “De Brutas, Nada.” The series, a romantic comedy set in Mexico City, follows a group of friends as they navigate young adult life; Ía, who grew up in Mexico City, applauds that the series (which actually filmed in Bogota, Colombia) reflects the cosmopolitan aspect and bustle of her hometown. There’s a broken engagement, career and social media drama, an LGBTQ story line, romantic tension with a roommate, and late-night drinking at bars.

“It looks like the place I know,” she says. “There’s always things happening, and an effervescence of culture, of art.”

While Mexican television is closely associated with the telenovela form, “De Brutas, Nada” is not rooted in melodrama, and targets a specifically Millennial audience. “This is the kind of show that I would have liked to see more of growing up,” says Ía. “Because it’s [set] in Mexico, it’s in Spanish, it’s our culture, but it still feels like it has the production quality of a show anywhere in America or Europe.”

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“Americans don’t always consume the projects that are made outside [the country], and I feel like we have so much in common and we’re always doing so many things together, even if we don’t realize it,” she says. “This platform, Pantaya, is amazing to bring us together and see that we’re just the same: we want the same things, we like the same things, we like to watch nice shows before we go to bed. And maybe for people who have Latin American descent who live in America, it’s a way for them to also feel closer to home.”

The 25-year-old actress was raised in an artistic family — her mother, Nailea Norvind, is a well-known telenovela actress, her grandmother was actress and filmmaker Eva Norvind, and both of Ía’s sisters are actresses. Acting was always in the forefront for Ía growing up, but she committed to doing it professionally only after her first two films, and credits “After Lucia” — which won the 2012 Cannes Prize of Un Certain Regard — as the project that solidified her choice of career.

A few years ago, Ía took a hiatus and pursued another lifelong creative interest: music. “I started writing songs just for me, and some producer friends heard them and were like, oh, we can work with this,” she says, adding that this year has marked a turning point in how she hopes to create and share her music going forward.

She’s been at home in Mexico for the entirety of 2020; the downtime has allowed her to work on some personal projects (including, in the last few months, some new music), and just relax from the typical hectic ritmo of an entertainment career. “I was on my toes doing stuff 24/7, and I hadn’t had time for myself in a long time,” she says.

It might be back to set soon, though; the actress, who in past seasons has shown up in the front row for Chanel and Calvin Klein shows, notes that she might be filming another project before the end of the year. For now, she’s just excited to see how audiences respond to “De Brutas, Nada” — and so far, the reaction has been positive. They’ve already filmed a second season, and — if all goes well — Ía hopes that they’ll return to Bogota for a season three sometime next year.

“Everything that has organically come to me is so nice, people really connect with the characters, with the settings,” she says. “It’s a really fun show to watch, and it feels fresh and relaxing. I’ve been seeing the reaction that I hoped people would get from seeing the show, which is having a good time.”

Tessa Ía at the Chanel “Code Coco” watch launch party in 2017. Sipa USA via AP